[ad_1]
LOS ANGELES – One of my strongest beliefs in my life is that joy does not exist in a vacuum. Joy does not exist without pain. Highs do not happen without stockings. We will not know the wonders of the mountain without also discovering the depths of the valley. This is not only true in life, but also in football. If you do not experience overwhelming defeats, you have no idea of the quality of the victories.
There is no doubt about what happened Sunday night at the Banc of California Stadium in Los Angeles. The Seattle Sounders were beaten by the Los Angeles football club. Seattle was the worst of the two top teams in MLS in every respect. You, reader, probably already know it. You also suffered from those 90 minutes. It was not fun. At all.
Suffering can teach us life lessons, but also football lessons. Have you ever tried to grab a hot pan from the oven without a glove? It's a mistake you make only once. If we want to be dramatic – and let's be honest, I have a talent for drama – a football season can look a lot like a season of life. Highs and lows. Joy and pain Mountains and deep valleys. And as in a season of life, there are lessons to be learned once.
If the Seattle Sounders want to play the Fan Shield, they have to make sure that the pain felt Sunday afternoon in Los Angeles will only happen once in this season. You can not win every game. You have a space in life to be fallible. The Sounders took part in this match as the last undefeated team of Major League Soccer. They won this title only 48 hours after the defeat of Houston Dynamo against LA Galaxy on Friday night. In life, pain must inform joy. Learn and grow.
A pain that the Sounders felt against LAFC was a disorganized and disinterested back line. All conceded goals were bad, but none was worse than the fourth. No communication. No organization. Nobody stalks their man. Some lessons can be learned here, but the details will certainly be discussed elsewhere in the pages of this website.
After experiencing the lows of such a loss, I consider it useful to look at the situation as a whole. So, let's do that. The Sounders took part in this match as the last undefeated team of the league this season …and they had the best points record per game. None of these things are true now. It's good. Even the best boxers take one on the chin from time to time. It makes me feel alive, I'm told. The Sounders took one on the chin Sunday night. A historically formidable defensive team has looked everywhere against perhaps the best attack ever seen by Major League Soccer.
A lesson that Sounders must learn: what to do when Chad Marshall can not play. Kim Kee-hee and Roman Torres had very bad afternoons in Los Angeles. The former looks like a Defender of the Year candidate playing on the right side of the defense, but when he is forced to play with Torres (and subsequently on the left side of the defense), his quality suffers tremendously. . The best days of Torres are behind him, that's for sure, but as long as he remains a Sounders player, he has to find a way to play better. Clear and simple.
It sounds incredibly stupid, but I thought the Sounders were playing well at 4-1. Certainly, LAFC easily sailed in LA at sunset, but Seattle was much more organized with Gustav Svensson and Nouhou playing on the bottom line. Svensson could and should be placed in the center-left center-back position when Marshall can no longer play.
While they return to Seattle on Sunday night, the Sounders may still consider themselves one of the best teams in the MLS, but they still have room to improve. We are now used to mid-season rookies who have turned an incredibly bad season into a late playoff hike. After seven games, I'm pretty sure that will not happen. The Sounders are still in their best debut in franchise history. That said, I think the Sunday night performance showed areas of the field where the Sounders should aim with signatures in the summer.
As I mentioned earlier, Svensson seemed decent at the center of the defense. But to bring him back there is to sacrifice his role in the midfield. I do not think Cristian Roldan will play as badly as he did again this season, but the Sounders could really use another high-level central midfielder. I'm not interested in retaking the debate on Ozzie Alonso, but I think the lack of depth of this position should be corrected. After all, Svensson is not rejuvenating.
The Sounders could and should also aim for a younger center to fill the hole in Marshall's size that exists when the fat man can not play and when he (unfortunately, ends up hanging up) his shoes. I can not predict when this will happen, but the emergency plan to replace the best defenseman in MLS history must be clear. After several seasons of offensive talent infused into training during the summer transfer window, they should seek to strengthen their defense in the next window.
Now, do not misunderstand me. I do not think the Sounders are suddenly a shit team. Far from it, actually. It's still a very good team from MLS and they even showed it sometimes in Sunday's game. Sometimes we do this as a fan – I catch myself doing it all the time. But football, like life, is not binary. It's a logical game, but it does not happen with eithers and golds. Just like life, it happens with both and ets. Next Sunday night, the Sounders could find themselves even on points with LAFC, the team that has just watered them categorically.
It's absolutely a joy to be alive, reader. I sit here watching the Californian sunset kiss the skyline of Los Angeles, as I have often done in my childhood. I flew to Los Angeles to write about this football match. I had an idea of how that would happen, but my expectations were not met. But what do you know? It's life sometimes. The pain is learning joy. This could certainly be the case during a Seattle Sounders season that is likely to be special.
On this Easter Sunday, crying can delay the night but joy comes in the morning.
[ad_2]
Source link